Seen and Not Heard (12 page)

“I want you to assist my friend in her plan. I do not know the particulars, nor do I care to. I leave it up to you.”

“Who’s your friend, Hubert? What does she want from me?”

Hubert sighed again. “Her name is Madame Harriette Langlois. I’ll give you her address. You are to go to her apartment this afternoon at five-thirty and there she will tell you what she requires of you.”

“And you have no idea what that is?” Rocco persisted.

Hubert’s eyes were very small, very flat, very black. “She wishes you to kill her. You should be able to do that, shouldn’t you, Rocco? Kill an old lady?”

He knows, Rocco thought. Why should he be surprised? There was very little that Hubert didn’t know. But that changed matters. When he took care of Madame Harriette Langlois he would have to take care of Hubert. The old man might know, but he didn’t understand. No one could know, and live. It was part of their pact, and Rocco’s honor, nonexistent in every other matter, was ironclad in this one.

“I should be able to manage, Hubert,” Rocco said gently. And he watched Hubert shiver in the overwarm apartment.

The day was cool and overcast as Claire moved down the sidewalk. She had to force herself to move at a leisurely pace, when all her instincts told her to hurry, hurry. Nerves, she told herself. She still couldn’t rid herself of the feeling of being watched. It was bad enough in the apartment—she constantly found herself looking over her shoulder, peering into the dimly lit corners of the rambling old place.

But outside it was even worse. She couldn’t walk down a street, go to the market, even buy a newspaper without having the awful sense of being spied upon.

It was all in her imagination, it had to be. No one would care what an American expatriate was doing wandering the streets of Paris. She wasn’t pretty enough to attract the attention of the roaming males, she wasn’t being furtive enough to interest the police. No, it had to be her paranoia, coupled with a guilty conscience.

Guilt was becoming second nature to her. Guilt over Brian, guilt at the thought of abandoning Nicole, guilt over leaving Marc without a word.

That was exactly what she intended. While she could summon up enough courage to leave, that bravery vanished when she contemplated a confrontation with Marc. Not that she expected unpleasantness. He wouldn’t try to force her, he wouldn’t beg or plead.

No, he would do far worse. He would mesmerize her, as he always had, he would put his hands on her and swiftly, efficiently drive all rational thought out of her brain. She’d always hated it when she’d read that in books—where normally intelligent women turned into mindless idiots when the swaggering heroes took them to bed. Now she knew it could happen. She just couldn’t rid herself of the suspicion that in this case Marc wasn’t the hero.

Claire wasn’t quite sure where she was, but it didn’t matter. All she wanted was some fresh air, some way to pass the time until she confronted Harriette Langlois in her den. She had a little-used French phrasebook in her back pocket. It had never done much good before, it would probably be useless today, but she had to use every weapon available to her. If she had to she could have Nicole translate for her, but that might get a little touchy. It would be better if Nicole didn’t know she was leaving until the last possible moment.

She bought a newspaper and a cup of coffee at a sidewalk café, then wished she hadn’t. The chair was too hard, the day too cool to sit outside, the waiter too inclined to hover. And the newspaper was too horrific.

She should have known better than to have bought it. She favored one of the splashier rags, one with screaming headlines and lots of pictures. Their choice had been particularly gory, but for once Claire had no difficulty deciphering the lead story. There was a nasty photograph of an old lady, butchered in her apartment near the Pompidou Centre. Another photograph showed a man lying in a littered street, and she didn’t need to look at the bloodstained torso to know that he was dead. The somber police
behind the corpse suggested they had been responsible for the man’s demise, and Claire breathed a small, cautious sigh of relief. Maybe they’d finally caught the man, then, the one who’d been slaughtering the old women.

The waiter appeared at her elbow, looking over her shoulder at the grisly newspaper account. He started talking, so quickly she doubted she would have understood him even in English, and Claire looked around in sudden desperation, that panicked, closed-in feeling washing over her once more. Why did she stop, why did she even attempt something as normal as a midmorning cup of coffee?

“I’m sorry, I don’t speak French,” she said haltingly.

The waiter looked at her with expected contempt, then jabbed a grimy figure at the grainy photographs in front of her, continuing to jabber at her.

“He’s trying to tell you his theory about the murders.” The slow, wonderful voice to her left caught her attention, and she turned and flashed a smile of relief and sheer pleasure at Thomas Jefferson Parkhurst. Now she knew why she was in this part of town, why she had chosen this café. She knew nothing of Paris save her own small neighborhood and certain landmarks. She knew Tom lived near this small, tidy café, and she’d headed there, mindlessly, unerringly, hoping to find him.

Find him she had. When she smiled up at him he looked startled, taken aback. And then he’d smiled back, that slow, sexy crinkling around his eyes and mouth, and taken the chair beside her, dismissing the waiter with a few fluent French phrases.

“What was his theory?” Claire tried to wipe what she knew was an idiotic grin off her face. Was it relief that made her overjoyed to see him? Was it coincidence that so soon after meeting him she’d decided to leave Marc? Or was she making another foolish mistake?

Tom reached out and put a hand on hers. The warmth of his flesh was soothing, comforting, and she wanted to turn her palm over and grasp his. She didn’t.

Tom shrugged, but he didn’t remove his hand. “He thinks
the man the police shot was just a scapegoat. That the police are useless fools and can’t find the criminal, so they killed an innocent passerby to make themselves look better.”

“What do you think? Did you read the paper?” She didn’t want to talk about murders that had nothing to do with her, but the alternative was even more threatening.

“It seems unlikely that the man would have killed all those women. He was just a lower-level bureaucrat. He had no motive and even less opportunity. However, it seems pretty clear that he did kill the woman in the photograph. Why are you here?”

The question came so quickly that she didn’t expect it, wasn’t prepared to counter it. She looked up into his warm blue eyes and told him the truth. “I don’t know. I think I was looking for you.”

The hand tightened on hers for a moment, and his wonderful grin lit his face once more. “Good. It saved me the trouble of looking for you. You never told me where you lived.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea …”

“It’s a terrific idea,” he interrupted. “If you don’t tell me I’ll follow you home.”

Claire shivered in the bright sunlight. “Have you been following me already?” She could still feel the memory of the eyes burning into her back.

“No. Why?”

She gave herself an imperceptible shake. “Guilty conscience, I guess,” she said with a self-deprecating grin that didn’t reach her eyes. “I shouldn’t be here with you.”

“Why not? We’re just a couple of expatriates sharing news of home and a cup of coffee. There’s nothing wrong in that. Unless there’s more to it.” His voice was calm, implacable, just the tiniest bit goading.

Claire knew she should ignore it, should agree that their meeting was harmless. His hand was still on hers, the heat of his flesh sinking into her chilled bones, and slowly she turned her palm over, her fingers grasping his. She smiled ruefully. “Unless there’s more to it,” she echoed, her eyes meeting his for a long, breathless moment.

His fingers tightened around hers. “Claire …”

“Claire! What on earth are you doing here!”

She hadn’t seen them coming. If she had, she would have released Tom’s hand, she would have dived under the table to avoid them. As it was, all she could do was look up into two almost identical pairs of dark French eyes and curse the day she was born.

“Robert and I were wondering where you and Marc had gotten to,” Solange Capet said, keeping a possessive arm around her husband. “We’ve seen nothing of you recently. And who is this charming young man?”

Claire suppressed the urge to scream. Solange and Robert Capet were the only people Marc had ever socialized with. Robert was a fellow mime of splendid physical attributes and not much brain power; Solange was much older, much richer, a major patron of the Théâtre du Mime. Claire had always suspected that she and Marc had once been lovers, and the malicious glint in Solange’s eyes did nothing to discourage that supposition.

“I’m Claire’s brother,” Tom said helpfully. “Jeff MacIntyre, from Boston.”

Claire swallowed her groan of dismay as Solange’s grin widened. “Claire is an only child,” she said sweetly. “How very naughty of you, Claire darling. Tell me, does Marc know what you do when you go out? He never was terribly modern about these things.”

“Tom is a friend.” There was no way she could keep the defensiveness from her voice, but it no longer mattered. She had never liked Solange or her witless husband, and right now she detested them.

“Tom? I thought his name was Jeff?” Solange cooed. Her mauve-tinted eyelids drooped for a moment as she surveyed Claire’s companion. “You know, I don’t blame you. He’s very attractive in a roughhewn sort of way. Marc won’t take kindly to being a cuckold, and believe me, he’ll find out.”

“I’m not cheating on Marc!” Claire said desperately. Tom’s fingers clenched warningly around her own, and she realized belatedly that she hadn’t let go of his hand. She wasn’t about to do it now—the damage had been done, and
she needed the reassuring touch of his flesh too badly in the face of Solange’s sophisticated malice.

“No?” said Solange. “Well, if I were you I’d be sorely tempted. However, let me give you a piece of advice. I’d wait until Marc is out of town before I’d take a lover. Marc has a nasty temper and a streak of unpleasantness in him that it would be wise to avoid.”

Claire opened her mouth to protest once more when Solange’s words sunk in. “Marc is out of town,” she said slowly.

“Is he?”

“You should know that as well as I do,” Claire said. “He’s on tour with the Théâtre du Mime.”

Was that pity on Solange’s face, mixed the amusement? It was too hard to tell. “No, he’s not.”

“He’s been gone two weeks,” Claire said desperately.

“He may very well be. But he’s not on tour. If he were, Robert would be with him. And I, as a major fund-raiser, would know about it. If Marc told you he was going on tour he lied to you.” Reaching over, she patted Claire’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. Perhaps he’s found a lover of his own and just hasn’t wanted to break the news to you. When he comes back and finds Jeff/Tom here he might be relieved. Or then again, he might not.” She moved away, taking the oblivious Robert with her. “Keep in touch,
chérie
. This is almost as good as ‘Dynasty.’”

Slowly Claire removed her hand from Tom’s. Slowly she rose from the table. “Would you pay for my coffee? I never know how much they want.”

“Claire, don’t leave!”

“I have to.”

Tom was on his feet, searching his pockets for change, frustration and impatience on his face. “Can’t you see that woman was a lying troublemaker? Of course Marc is out of town, and even if he isn’t, what does it matter? You haven’t done anything wrong. Are you afraid of him? Has he threatened you, hurt you in any way?”

“No. No, he hasn’t hurt me,” she said slowly. “I’d better
get back.” And before he could stop her she was racing down the streets, her Reeboks silent on the sidewalks.

She could feel his eyes watching her hasty departure, but she knew those weren’t the eyes that had watched her, followed her. She knew now whose eyes they were. No, Marc hadn’t threatened, abused her. But he frightened her. Very much indeed.

And tucking the grisly newspaper under her arm, she turned the corner and raced homeward, a thousand demons riding at her back.

The apartment was empty. Claire made very sure of that fact, starting with the hall closet and working her way back through the huge, stately rooms to the cavernous kitchen. No sign of Marc, no sign that he’d been there in the past two weeks. All that remained was her defiant clutter.

Pushing up the sleeves of her baggy cotton sweater, Claire began to clean. She started in the kitchen, working with single-minded purpose, scrubbing and dusting and straightening, making sure every piece of china was back in place, every piece of silver polished and sparkling, the counters and table scrubbed, the floor spotless, the ceilings free of cobwebs.

Without stopping any longer than she needed to consume too much black coffee, she moved through the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the dining room and formal salon, working with a frenzy only intensified by the silent reproach of the apartment and the caffeine in her system. She kept her mind a perfect blank, refusing to think about why she was doing this, refusing to acknowledge the very real panic that had swamped her when she imagined Marc’s reaction when he saw how she had trashed his beloved apartment.

She stopped outside of Nicole’s room, exhausted, sweating, almost too weary to continue. But she knew Nicole was just as intrinsically messy as she herself was, knew that as
long as her father was out of reach she’d let her own room turn into a shambles.

She opened the door and then stopped, leaning against the door frame and staring at what she hadn’t quite comprehended during her previous reconnaissance.

Nicole’s room was spotless.

Messy Nicole, who’d left her dishes in the sink just as Claire had, who’d dropped coats in the hallway and crumbs on the silk-covered sofas, had kept her own room scrupulously neat.

Claire shut the door silently, moving back through the empty apartment that didn’t feel empty. It hadn’t been deeply ingrained instincts that had kept Nicole’s room neat. She must have known, deep in her nine-year-old heart, that Marc was still around. Watching.